Windows Phone 7 powered by Windows Azure heads above the clouds

On Friday morning, Southampton university launched a Windows Phone 7 handset in to the upper atmosphere using a helium balloon and logged scientific data using a Windows Phone 7 app and Windows Azure.

Here is the full breakdown from Dr Andras Sobester:

“Part of the ASTRA (Atmospheric Science Through Robotic Aircraft) initiative, the goal of this flight was to demonstrate the feasibility of using a low-powered, lightweight commodity device (a Windows Phone 7) as a data logger, communications link and a portal to high performance computing resources in the cloud (through Windows Azure).

ASTRA 7 reached a maximum altitude of 18,237 meters during its 1h 16' flight. The Segoz Logger app running on the WP7 operated, as designed, throughout the flight, providing location notifications to Windows Azure when in GSM range (with the Azure worker re-computing the forecast landing site each time). The maximum speed reached by ASTRA 7 was around 90mph, logged at an altitude of 10.1km, as the balloon-borne flight train was traversing the jet stream. ASTRA 7 landed 46.6 miles downrange (very close to the pre-flight prediction based on the ASTRA balloon flight simulation model of 47.7 miles).